A GEEK DADDY: Sharing a dad's adventures in parenting plus enjoying the geeky side of life

Saturday, February 18, 2012

I took my superheroes to see Elmo's Super Heroes

We had been considering taking our twins to see Sesame
Street Live for awhile, but had been putting it off for a variety of reasons.
Would our kids be too scared of the characters? I'd already had several
"incidents" taking our children to see costumed characters Curious
George, Sid the Science Kid and the Easter Bunny that we will just say didn't
end well.Would they be able to sit
through the whole show and would it keep their attention?Three year olds are notorious for short
attention spans and when we took them to see their first movie Puss & Boots
a few months ago they only made it through the first half of the show before
they were ready to go home.Was the
theater going to be a claustrophobic madhouse of crazed kids and parents?Come on we've all been there!

Your kids are only young once and how much more
family-friendly a production can you go to than Sesame Street Live? So we
finally committed to go and I'm pleased to report that it was an excellent
experience taking our superheroes to see "Elmo's Super Heroes" at the
Fox Theatre in Detroit last week. The show was very engaging, fun and
educational for its preschool audience (probably best age range to go would be
when your kids are 3 & 4 years old) with some side jokes and dance numbers
to keep the parents amused and entertained as well (a very talented Cookie
Monster did an Irish jig that would give Mike Flatley a run for his money).There were a number of skits and songs that
reached out to the kids in the audience encouraging them to interact with the Sesame
Street characters throughout the performance.

The premise of the show is that Super Grover had lost his
super powers so Elmo and his friends have to become super heroes to replace
him.Elmo's squad goes on a variety of
missions where they learn valuable lessons (my favorite was when Oscar the
Grouch turns Sesame Street into "Oscar's World").In the end they use these lessons about
things like eating healthy food, making time to exercising, taking care of
yourself with bathing & grooming, and getting enough sleep to help restore
Super Grover's self-confidence and his super powers.

Our twins were riveted to the show.They counted with the Count, danced the Pigeon
Dance with Bert, clapped along with Ernie, sang with Zoe, and yelled out answers to Elmo's questions.They didn't show any fear of the costumed
characters and probably could have sat through another hour as they were
disappointed that the show wasn't longer.I was so proud of how well the twins behaved during the show as they sat
in their chairs and focused on the performance . The show kept our kids attention the whole
time...wow! In fact, the crowd wasn't even
the headache we were worried it would be either as the seating and exiting of
the theater was very organized and most people were very polite and respectful
of the other families in the audience.It
was a great experience for our family! So I would say the twins give two thumbs
up to Sesame Street Live: Elmo's Super Heroes.

Two warnings though! First, beware at intermission they bring
out these really awesome looking Elmo helium balloons to sell that all the kids want.At $12 dollars a pop that can be a pricey
souvenir for a family with 2 or more kids with them.I told our kids that their balloons were
waiting for them at home and stopped by the Dollar Store after the show.For $2 dollars I was able to get them some
Elmo balloons that are still floating almost a week later and the kids are
still playing with.I'll admit they
weren't as nice as the ones at the show, but they were $22 cheaper and hey
we're talking about making 3 year olds happy here.Secondly, my son and daughter have asked us
every day since the show when we were going to be able to go back to see their
friend Elmo again.Be prepared for some
creative solutions to that question because if you go to see Sesame Street Live
your kids are going to have a great time and want to go back again, probably
right away.